Motorcycle Granny: A cautionary tale

The drive was a
hard one; by the time Lisa and I got back to Chapel Hill we’d
logged over 1400 miles. But driving allowed me — en route to the
Visioning Council at Summer Hill Farm in Upstate New York — to
spend time with my 88-year-old mother in Manassas, Virginia, and
the next day see my three grandchildren in Wilmington, Delaware.

Sunday
morning found us driving through the D.C. suburbs. At a stop
light, Lisa and I both became aware of loud and heated talk.
Through my side mirror, I saw someone straddling a motorcycle;
and I could see her — for it turned out to be a woman,
70-years-old if a day, zipped up in a black leather jump suit —
I could see her leaning over and shouting threats and
obscenities at the woman in the car directly behind us.

“What makes
you think you can do that? I can’t believe you! You know what
I’m going to do? I’m going to follow you home. That’s what I’m
going to do: follow you home and beat your ass.” Then she formed
her hand into a gun, pointed it at the woman and “fired.”

When the
light changed, Motorcycle Granny eased her Harley-Davidson
behind the woman’s car and tailed her. I fell back and followed
both of them. The driver in the car tried to lose her stalker by
weaving carefully across the three lanes of traffic and
accelerating or slowing down. Nothing worked. When we came to a
second light, Motorcycle Granny pulled along side the woman’s
car and resumed her tirade through the window of the empty
passenger’s side.

Lisa, who is
a psychiatric nurse, thought the motorcyclist was dangerous and
probably terrifying to the woman in the car. She called 911 and
— a bit lost for words to describe the situation and where she
was calling from (since we in fact changed jurisdictions during
the call, leaving one county and entering another) — reported
her. A mile further down the highway, when the woman in the lead
car turned onto U.S. 29, we again called 911. I told Lisa I
thought we could defuse the situation by pulling along side the
motorcyclist at the next stop light and telling her we’d
reported her.

“You keep
this distance! That woman’s crazy. She’s just as likely to pull
out a gun and shoot both of us through the window.”

Two Fairfax
County patrol cars, their lights flashing and sirens wailing,
overtook us at the next intersection. We were immediately
segregated into three interrogation spaces with invisible walls.
After Lisa and I gave our testimony to one of the patrolman, I
looked over at Motorcycle Granny, who’d been for the moment left
alone in the middle interrogation “room” and was
standing-sitting with her butt propped against the Harley. Her
helmeted head was hanging; and she seemed deflated, as if all
the air — and with it, all her spleen and menace — had been
siphoned off.

Lisa and I
were both concerned for the driver of the car and wanted
reassurance she was all right and wanted to tell her we had
called 911 and had been following her. When I’m an angel of
mercy this way, I’m rarely angelic enough not to want credit for
my good deed. When Lisa started toward the woman’s car, she was
promptly intercepted and escorted back to our “room.” She shared
her concerns with the officer, who assured her that he would
convey them to the other woman. I told him I had not been able
to see the driver well, but that she seemed young and slight and
had probably been terrified.

“Then you
didn’t know,” he asked, “that she had two children seat-belted
in the back, a 3- and a 5-year-old?”

Shortly
afterwards we were permitted to leave. The police had escorted
the old woman to the back of one of the patrol cars and wanted
her to lean, spread-eagle, against the trunk while they patted
her down for weapons. She was humiliated. “Please,” she pleaded,
“you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

I’ve thought
a lot about this incident. For one thing, it reminds me of the “lesson
in Japanese manners” that Terry Dobson received as a young
man on a Tokyo subway (inserted below). But, as Drew Leder in his book
Spiritual Passages makes clear, that story is a parable
about elder wisdom. This is a very different story. I
have been wondering what words one might have said that could
have invited the old woman to remember herself. I thought
it unlikely her encounter with the legal system, or for that
matter, the mental health establishment, would be a path to
wisdom. The one thing I can think of that I would have liked to
say is, “Grandmother, you shouldn’t be scaring those children.”

On a Tokyo Subwayby Terry Dobson

The train
clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy
spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty - a few
housewives with their kids in tow, some old folks going
shopping. I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty
hedgerows.

At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the afternoon
quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible
curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore labourer’s
clothing, and he was big, drunk, and dirty. Screaming, he swung
at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the
laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that she was
unharmed.

Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the
other end of the car. The labourer aimed a kick at the
retreating back of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to
safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole
in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its
stanchion. I could see that one of his hands was cut and
bleeding. The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with
fear. I stood up.

I was young then, some 20 years ago, and in pretty good
shape. I’d been putting in a solid eight hours of aikido
training nearly every day for the past three years. I like to
throw and grapple. I thought I was tough. Trouble was, my
martial skill was untested in actual combat. As students of
aikido, we were not allowed to fight.

"Aikido", my teacher had said again and again, "is the art of
reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his
connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people, you
are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how
to start it."

I listened to his words. I tried hard I even went so far as
to cross the street to avoid the chimpira, the pinball punks who
lounged around the train stations. My forbearance exalted me. I
felt both tough and holy. In my heart, however, I wanted an
absolutely legitimate opportunity whereby I might save the
innocent by destroying the guilty.

This is it! I said to myself, getting to my feet. People are
in danger and if I don’t do something fast, they will probably
get hurt.
Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus
his rage. "Aha!" He roared. "A foreigner! You need a lesson in
Japanese manners!"

I held on lightly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him
a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this
turkey apart, but he had to make the first move. I wanted him
mad, so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss.
"All right!" He hollered. "You’re gonna get a lesson." He
gathered himself for a rush at me.
A split second before he could move, someone shouted "Hey!"
It was earsplitting. I remember the strangely joyous, lilting
quality of it - as though you and a friend had been searching
diligently for something, and he suddenly stumbled upon it.
"Hey!"
I wheeled to my left; the drunk spun to his right. We both
stared down at a little old Japanese. He must have been well
into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there
immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me, but beamed
delightedly at the laborer, as though he had a most important,
most welcome secret to share.

"C’mere," the old man said in an easy vernacular, beckoning
to the drunk. "C’mere and talk with me." He waved his hand
lightly.

The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet
belligerently in front of the old gentleman, and roared above
the clacking wheels, "Why the hell should I talk to you?" The
drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow moved so much as a
millimeter, I’d drop him in his socks.

The old man continued to beam at the laborer.
"What’cha been drinkin’?" he asked, his eyes sparkling with
interest. "I been drinkin’ sake," the laborer bellowed back,
"and it’s none of your business!" Flecks of spittle spattered
the old man.

"Ok, that’s wonderful," the old man said, "absolutely
wonderful! You see, I love sake too. Every night, me and my wife
(she’s 76, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and
take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench.
We watch the sun go down, and we look to see how our persimmon
tree is doing. My great-grandfather planted that tree, and we
worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had
last winter. Our tree had done better than I expected, though
especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It is
gratifying to watch when we take our sake and go out to enjoy
the evening - even when it rains!" He looked up at the laborer,
eyes twinkling.

As he struggled to follow the old man’s conversation, the
drunk’s face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched.
"Yeah," he said. "I love persimmons too…" His voice trailed off.

"Yes," said the old man, smiling, "and I’m sure you have a
wonderful wife."

"No," replied the laborer. "My wife died." Very gently,
swaying with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob.
"I don’t got no wife, I don’t got no home, I don’t got no job. I
am so ashamed of myself." Tears rolled down his cheeks; a spasm
of despair rippled through his body.

Now it was my turn. Standing there in well-scrubbed youthful
innocence, my make-this-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness,
I suddenly felt dirtier than he was.

Then the train arrived at my stop. As the doors opened, I
heard the old man cluck sympathetically. "My, my," he said,
"that is a difficult predicament, indeed. Sit down here and tell
me about it."

I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled
on the seat, his head in the old man’s lap. The old man was
softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.

As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench. What I had
wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words.
I had just seen aikido tried in combat, and the essence of it
was love. I would have to practice the art with an entirely
different spirit. It would be a long time before I could speak
about the resolution of conflict.